F-16 for the IAF

- Air Marshal B.K. Pandey (RETD)

On the evening of November 7 this year, Abhay Paranjape, National Executive for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Business Development in India, Randall L. Howard, Director of Business Development, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Integrated Fighter Group, and Mark D. Johnson, F-35 Media Relations, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, carried out a briefing for few selected members of the Bengaluru-based media. The three senior executives were accompanied by a team from the Lockheed Martin plant at Fort Worth, Texas. Their visit to Bengaluru was meant primarily for interaction with the aerospace industry located here, both in the public and private sector. This initiative by Lockheed Martin was apparently a consequence of communication to the company from the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) seeking a proposal to manufacture a fighter aircraft in India under the ‘Make in India’ programme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In their response to the communication from the MoD, the American aerospace and defence major Lockheed Martin has offered to transfer lock, stock, and barrel, their only functioning production line of the F-16 from its present location in Fort Worth in the US to one in India as decided upon by the Government of India. Lockheed Martin believes that on account of the advantage of cost of production being significantly lower in India, there should logically be increase in global demand. For India, this move will generate a large number of skilled jobs, an attractive proposition indeed!